Retribution (Shaitan Wars)

by Sudipto Majumdar

  No opening had been found. Not even a weapons port or a sensors port could be discerned on the surface of the ship. The teams had used every type of scanning and tomography possible, from using ultrasound to x-rays. They had found no weak spot on the hull from those scanning to indicate a door or any other kind of opening. Trisha realized that the scans were encountering the armor of the ship. She envied the captain of this ship who had the privilege of flying a ship with such a perfect armor. The armor was doing its job perfectly even after 80 thousand years, it was betraying no weak spot!

  During the course of their unsuccessful attempts to find an entrance to the ship, the marines found something in a place that no one had bothered to look – on the ground under the ship on which it was standing. The belly of the spaceship was not flat. It was gently curved, not very different from the belly of a conventional airliner. The spaceship had no landing struts, it was lying on its belly. To give the ship stability, wedges had been placed along the sides of the ship that prevented it from rolling to either sides.

  The wedges had to have been manufactured in situ. They were huge concrete wedge shaped blocks, which would have been incredibly hard to move. Such huge blocks were necessary to hold up the massive weight of the ship, even in this low gravity of Mars. No one had given them much thought, till Ed ordered his marines to go over the wedges with a fine toothed comb, more out of frustration and having something to do than anything else.

  One of the wedges it turned out was a dummy. It was hollow according to the penetrative scans, although there was no obvious way to enter it. On careful inspection however, a door could be discerned on one of the walls, but it had been hastily cemented over from the outside. The shoddy way the concrete had been applied over the wall indicated that it had been done in a hurry.

  It was the chipping of this concrete that Yusuke was overseeing, as two marines were going about the task with hand held power drills and hammers. They were deliberately taking their time and going slow, they did not want to damage whatever lay on the other side. Yusuke wiped the sweat over his brow, just as the marines broke through to reveal a small section of what appeared to be a door.

  As the concrete cement was further chipped away, a door was revealed, brightly painted like everything else in this canyon. From inspecting the frame, it seemed like a hinged door that opened up on the inside, but was bolted on the outside. The door was unique in its size. They had come across a few other doors within the Ka-let habitat, but all had been standard five feet high, forcing the adult humans to bend and enter them.

  This door however was almost eight feet high, and proportionately broad as well. The bolting mechanism however was the same as other doors and placed exactly at the same height as the other doors to make it easy for the diminutive Ka-let to use them. Unbolting the door however did not open it. It did give way a bit, but clearly something on the other side was blocking the door.

  Scans showed that whatever was blocking the other side of the door was nonmetallic, but piled up like a rubble. Yusuke guessed that some part of the concrete wall that must have caved in, although it was strange because he had not seen any other evidence of cave ins in the construction on this canyon. A call was taken that they would muscle their way in by pushing the door.

  The small sized Gurkha marines stepped aside and four big US marines started pushing at the door, which slowly started giving way. After some moments, the door had opened up enough for one of the Gurkha marines to slip inside the darkness to clear up whatever was blocking the door.

  As a matter of precaution the civilians had donned their helmets of the hazmat suits and the marines were in their combat suits. They weren’t worried about attack, but any poisonous gasses that might be trapped inside. The Gurkha marine had switched on his lights before entering. The moment he slipped in, everybody heard him saying something loudly in Hindi over and over again.

  Ed panicked and shouted “What the hell is he saying?”

  Another of the Gurkha marine answered. “He is saying ‘Oh my god’ over and over again sir.”

  The marines switched to the camera view of the marine inside, displaying it on their faceplate, while the civilians watched it on the scroll held by Yusuke. The scene was shocking and ghastly. They may not have seen a Ka-let before, but it was obvious what was in front of them. Hundreds of desiccated corpses of Ka-let piled on top of each other. Their diminutive forms took nothing away from the tortured and contorted positions in which the bodies lay heaped one over the other.

  The narrow beam of light eerily focused on those mounds of corpses in otherwise total darkness. They wore no clothes, which was not a surprise. Modesty is a human quirk. The bodies had naturally mummified in the almost airless, dry environment of Mars. Skeletons and bones stuck out of dried skins on the unfortunate creatures.

  The mummified remains of the Ka-let looked strikingly like that of some earth animal, pointing towards convergent evolution that had occurred in at least on other place in this universe. The Ka-let had bones, unlike the Shaitans, and they were endoskeletons like most earth animals. The bones probably had muscles and tissues, which could only be studied by experts, but was definitely enclosed with skin, which could be seen.

  As the lead marine cleared the door and the rest of the team entered the doorway, they brought flood lights inside and the scale of death became clearer. The wedge was essentially a doorway to go deeper underground. The door opened to a landing about 30 square meters in area. The landing was filled with heaps of Ka-let corpses many layers deep, which had been blocking the door.

  The architecture of this place was unique because for the first time since the discovery of the enclosed canyon, they saw a structure to climb up and down. The landing opened up to a sloping and circular ramp, which went deep down. Where the ramp ended was not visible from the landing. For some reason, the Ka-let had chosen not to climb down walls in this place, but rather used ramps. The ramp was also littered with Ka-let bodies as far as the lights reached.

  Yusuke recorded, documented and added his annotations to all that he surveyed. The marines slowly started clearing the landing by removing the bodies outside as gently as possible using the only field stretcher that they had. It was slow painstaking work. After nearly two hours, they had cleared the landing and the upper part of the ramp. Yusuke’s documentation was interrupted by one of the geologists examining the walls of the landing. “Dr. Matsumoto, I think you should see this.” He exclaimed.

  Yusuke, Ed and Trisha were all close by and rushed to the part of the wall next to the door, the scientist was pointing at. There on the walls and the door were visible clear vertical and horizontal lines etched into the hard walls and carbon fiber in random fashion. “What do you think this is?” Trisha asked no one in particular.

  “I am no expert Captain, but I am willing to bet a fair amount what this is. If I am not mistaken, those are claw marks. I have examined the talons on the skeletons of those Ka-let. I bet those marks will match exactly in size with the talons of the Ka-let. Hundreds of Ka-let clawed at this door and wall in desperation as they were buried alive Captain.”

  There was a somber mood amongst the marines as they slowly made their way down the ramp. No one was talking, there was a hushed silence. A silence of reverence as one maintains while stepping into hallowed grounds. They now knew that this was not just any place they were entering. This was a tomb, a tomb where hundreds of sentient beings had been buried alive.

  The number of bodies littered reduced as they descended down, which they carefully sidestepped both out of respect and to ensure no damage to them. The bodies were brittle and crumbled at the slightest pressure. The ramp came to an end after about 40 meters of descent. The ramp was placed somewhere in the middle of the length of a long ravine like structure.

  Yusuke used his mapping spheres, which he had originally used to get the first glimpse of the canyon. From the image generated by the mapping device it became clear what this place was. This was a crevice on
the floor of the canyon. The Ka-let ship had landed over the crevice, completely blocking it. The ramp led to the enclosed space that resulted from blocking the crevice by the belly of the ship. They shone their lights right on top and could see the belly of the ship.

  This place was interesting in many other ways. For one this ‘tomb’, as the marines had taken to calling this place had areas, which looked like human workstations, sans the chairs which would be useless to the anatomy of a Ka-let. The workstations only differed in their height from the human version, these were lower and Ka-let friendly.

  There were racks with containers in storage areas, the content of which would have to be examined by the scientists. Unlike other storage areas they had found across the Ka-let habitat, the storage areas and the containers here were far smaller. It seemed like the storage area here was meant to store samples rather than mass consumption provisions.

  There were plethora of equipment, whose functions were unknown at the moment. These equipment were again distinct from the large amount of equipment found above. The equipment found here in the tomb seemed smaller and more delicate. I almost seemed like these were precision instruments, whereas the equipment above was production machinery.

  Yusuke could not help say out loud. “You know, if I didn’t know any better, I would say that this looks awfully like a Ka-let research lab.”

  The marines had fanned out in all directions recording with their helmet camera. All feed were being consolidated at the habitat outside, and then being beamed to Kormas base, from where they were further transmitted as packets to Earth. Right now, there was not a single human on Mars, who was not watching the feed of the marines.

  The humans had kept their suits on inside the tomb as a matter of ample precaution. It was a good thing now because most would not have otherwise heard the shout of the marine. “Sir! Sirs… Lance Naik Giri here. I think you should see this. For those who cannot see my location, I am at the northern extreme of the tomb.”

  The Marines ran directly towards Lance Naik Giri, since their HUD was displaying his location, the civilians simply followed the marines. As Trisha reached near the northern end of the tomb, she came to an abrupt halt at the sight. Cages. Rows upon rows of cages not unlike the Tiger cages she had seen as a child in the circus. She forced herself to walk slowly towards those cages with apprehension about what she would see.

  The first cage was empty, but the second one had something inside. She walked closer and there was no mistaking what the thing inside was. It was the mummified remains of a human being! Cage after cage had just one species of creatures inside, human beings. Some cages had single skeletal mummies, while some had a couple. There was one in front of which Trisha stopped, there were three inside this one.

  “Central, I don’t have the Ka-let script interpretation program, could you please try to decipher the script printed on the cages please?” Trisha heard Yusuke talk to the control habitat outside.

  “The program is still trying to piece the details sir, but broadly I can give you the gist of its sir. Those are feeding instructions sir.” Came the reply from Central.

  Trisha was still standing in front of the cage, where two mummified bodies were hugging each other with a tiny body in between them, as the two bodies tried to provide warmth to the little body in the center, as all three of them most probably froze to death. A tear drop fell from her cheek, as she saw a frozen moment in time 80 thousand years old, but as human as it would have been today.

  The empathy for the Ka-let was gone from Trisha’s heart, as she saw the Ka-let for the monsters that they were. These cruel aliens, had used her ancestors as lab rats experimenting on them and treating them no better than animals. She only had hatred burning inside her now for the Ka-let and was glad that they had died a horrible death.

  “Sir, Kormas base wants to open a channel. Dr. Shani Sweeny wants to cut in.” It was Central, patching up Kormas base to the proximity mode conversation that their com gear was set to. Dr. Shani Sweeny was the senior physician of the Kormas base.

  “Hey Yusuke, I can’t even begin to tell you how significant a discovery this is, I am sure you already know it. It is amazing that this is not just the most significant alien discovery. It is the most significant human paleontological discover in the history of human science! We have hundreds of the most well preserved 80 thousand year old human remains that could ever be hoped to be found! Can you imagine what this would do to our theories about human evolution?!” Dr. Sweeny could not hide her enthusiasm, which made Trisha’s blood boil.

  “These are not just some specimens Dr. Sweeny, these are human beings! Your and my ancestors, who were caged up like animals, tortured and experimented upon by these evil aliens! These were people Dr. Sweeny. Mothers, Fathers and children. Like those two out there in front of me, who curled up to protect their child with the last iota of heat that they could give to their baby, as they lay there freezing! Have some respect for these long dead ancestors of ours Dr. Sweeny.” Trisha was now roaring in anger.

  After a few seconds of silence from that rebuke, Dr. Sweeny spoke softly and hesitatingly. “Sorry Capt. Strong, I didn’t mean to be insensitive or anything… guess got carried away with the enormity of the moment, but this may not be what you think. I just needed a closer inspection, before I can confirm it.”

  “What do you mean ‘not as bad as you think’? You are thinking of DNA specimens being retrievable or some such scientific redemption from this barbaric tragedy? You…” Trisha was interrupted by Dr. Sweeny in mid-sentence.

  “No… No… No. That is not what I meant. It is just that they may be… Can you please get your camera near that cage to your left where that single specime… I mean single person is lying in a straight face upward position? I need to get a confirmation before I say this. I don’t want to step on more sensibilities if I get this wrong. Most of the specime… Most of the persons are lying in such curled up position, that I cannot see their features and bone structure properly.” Dr. Sweeny said quickly before Trisha could admonish her any more.

  Yusuke diplomatically stepped in to save the two ladies from any further shouting. He went next to the cage Dr. Sweeny had requested. He did not have a helmet mounted camera on his Hazmat suit, but he used his scroll to beam the picture, inserting his hands into the cage and taking the pictures from a close perspective, slowly panning the entire body. The body looked like that of stocky and healthy male, though a bit short in height.

  “Just as I suspected. Capt. Strong, you can relax a bit, that is not a human, and I suspect most if not all of the creatures in the cages are not humans.” Dr. Sweeny said in triumph.

  Yusuke intervened before Trisha could get a chance to respond. He feared that Trisha might explode any moment. “What do you mean Shani? You may be the doctor, but I am sure I can recognize a human when I see one, even a long dead human, Shani.”

  “Depends on what you mean by human and whom you call human Yusuke. If you mean our species Homo Sapiens, then that mummified body lying out there is not a human. It is however a close cousin, someone whom you and I would have recognized as slightly different from us, if that female lying in front of you had her flesh, muscles and hair intact on her.” Dr. Sweeny replied.

  “Wait a moment… that is a female?! Come on Shani! From what angle does that man lying inside that cage look like a female?” Yusuke said in a joking, almost taunting manner.

  “I may not know rocks Dr. Matsumoto, but I do know anatomy, especially human anatomy. That is a female, who had enough muscles to be able to outwrestle the strongest Marine on this planet! That is because this is not a Homo Sapien female Yusuke. That is a Neanderthal!” Dr. Sweeny said sternly. She did not like a non-medico challenging her medical authority.

  “What?!” Yusuke and Trisha said together in astonishment.

  Shani chose to address Trisha, to emphasize that she stood vindicated. “Yes Capt. Strong, and I suspect each and every one of the specimen I have seen so far to be Neande
rthal. It is possible that the Ka-let may have also brought Homo Sapiens, and there may be some in one of those cages I have not seen yet, but don’t bother with surveying them for me. I am going to be on the next shuttle to the South Pole, so I will survey for myself. Do not touch or try to remove the bodies from the cage. I need to document them exactly as they have been lying. I do not want the most significant find in human paleontology to be contaminated in any way. I would appreciate if you found a way to open those cages though. It helps to be able to approach the specimens you are documenting.”

  Over the course of the next week, as the electrifying news of the archeological finds spread through the scientists on Earth, and there was clamor for every kind of data about the biology and biological samples of both the Ka-let and the Neanderthal mummies, Dr. Sweeny worked tirelessly and meticulously. Since no life had been found on Mars, there had been no microbiologists or related specializations on the Kormas base. The only qualified people to handle biological samples were the three physicians and one of the Marine medic, who had gone through advanced courses. Even they were not qualified to handle archeological or paleontological samples. They all worked as best as they could with instructions from Earth.

  The most precious secret was guarded by the tomb till the last – the lab’s main computer and data repository! It was found 6 days after the opening of the tomb, after over 30 people had searched and cataloged every square inch of the tomb. The only reason it was found, was because Ed had ordered that the main power line had to be traced back to every appliance where it terminated.

  The Marines had gone about the task with typical military doggedness, and one of them hit the jackpot. The computer was hidden by embedding it inside the stone walls of tomb, with just enough opening to let out the power wire. There were no wires or ports to interface with the computer. Some of the engineers doubted whether it was a computer at all. Thankfully the power specifications of the computer was printed in the characteristic Ka-let manner on the computer itself, so the engineers were able to power up the computer without blowing it up with an overcharge.